Category: Salon News

Wild Felines and Divine Females as Guardians of Sacred Place

ASWM Scholar Salon with Miranda Shaw

May 27, 2020 3 PM Eastern Daylight Time

“My presentation offers an explanation for the ancient and enduring association between wild felines – primarily lions — and revered female figures. Bringing together iconographic and zoological evidence, I will illustrate the highlights of a historical trajectory spanning the Upper Paleolithic and living traditions. The details of art and symbolism (e.g., floral, agrarian, martial, civic, royal, celestial, and cosmological) elicit the nuances of power evoked by the leonine imagery. The nature and scope of the power in turn helps us understand the shared character of the leonine females as guardians of sacred place (caves, settlements, cities, empires, nations). I also consider the behavior, qualities, and distinctive roles of the females of the lion species (panthera leo) in order to understand the reverence for and trust vested in a power shared in common by wild felines, divine females, and women. I draw conclusions about the contours of female ferocity, in contrast to the glorification of violent conquest that accompanied the rise of patriarchy. I will issue a call to reclaim the ideal of female ferocity in order to protect our sacred home, mother earth.”

Miranda Shaw (Ph.D., Harvard University) is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Richmond in Virginia, and a member of the ASWM Advisory Board.  Her publications on women’s spiritual practices and female deities in South Asia and the Himalayas include Passionate Enlightenment: Women in Tantric Buddhism (PUP, 1994), which has been translated into six languages, and Buddhist Goddesses of India (PUP, 2006).

Scholar Salons are an ASWM member benefit. Members will receive a link to join the Salon. If you are not yet an ASWM member, join here. The Salon recording will be available to members after the event.

Lessons from the Roadless Road: Mongolia in 2019

Arieahn Matamonasa, Ph.D., DePaul University, Chicago, IL

Date and time: Wednesday December 11, 2019, 1:00 PM Central Time

Dr. Matamonasa writes,

“I am a clinical psychologist, researcher and cross-culturally trained traditional healer. My lifelong work has been building bridges between indigenous healing and worldviews and Western psychology. In the Summer of 2019, I traveled with a group of nine other Westerners to visit the ancient steppes and valleys of Mongolia to visit the people of Khuvdgal, the Darkhad Valley and Tsagaan Nuur. These people represent the world’s oldest shamanic traditions that have persisted despite years of persecution and oppression. The world’s remaining Indigenous people are the keepers of our human intellectual and ecological knowledge through deep time. This presentation highlights some of my experiences and the lessons that are invaluable for modern cultures in this time of ecological, spiritual and social crisis.”

Highlights will include:

• Stepping back in time: Vast, ancient wild spaces
• Community in the West: ‘downloaded’ but not installed
• Shaman’s Warnings: Consumerism and predatory cultures

Members will receive a link to join the Salon. If you are not yet an ASWM member, join now to participate. The Salon recording will be available to members after the event.

Recordings are listed on our Member Library’s Scholars Salon page womenandmyth.org/salons. Updated Salon News and Scholars Salon recordings are here in chronological order, most recent first.